I am 60yrs old, a female, married 26yrs and I have never told a living soul about my problem. I am going (semi-public) this way to try and talk to other human beings who have this particular disorder. As long as I can remember, even into my childhood, I have had this disorder. It's only been 2yrs since I realized it was an actual psychiatric disorder. After open heart surgery 3yrs ago, my skin had been virtually free from any blemishes. After all, my teen years of breakouts were long gone and my skin even in those days never got as bad as acne. Just a couple of spots on the oily parts of my face e.g., chin,nose, etc.
All of a sudden I had open sores on both legs, both arms. Then they healed and I started an outbreak on my lower and upper abdomen which continues today. They won't heal because I keep picking and eating the scabs about every 3rd day or when I can't stand how they feel on my body or look on my body.
I have had manic-depression since the age of thirty. Along with 30 years of seeing, psychiatrists, psychologists, and licensed social workers. I have been most fortunate in that I have always had good medical insurance.
Two years ago, not even haved tried to look up my problem in the computer, decided to go see a good dermatologist. I live in a section of the country that boasts excellecnt medical care. People come from all over the world to see our pediatric and adult practioners. So all my doctors are out of one medical center/teaching hosp/university center with an excellent medical school. I go into its website to find a dermatologist. I in my 60 yrs have also worked in the medical field and with my experience knew from practice that 9 times out of 10 some of the best doctors I have had were either Jewish or Aisan. I chose to pick a jewish dermatologist associated with the medical center. Well, after seeing this man only twice. He wrote his instructions for me and also his diagnoses. It was neurotic excoriations. I saw it on the paper, but , I was also intelligent enough to know what neurotic meant and what excoriations meant. This was believe it or not my first inklings of what I had been unknowingly doing to myself. The dermatologist never spoke with me about what neur excoriations meant. When I got home, I realized, unbeknownst to me, he somehow in his vast knowledge and experience and without even questioning me, came to this diagnosis. Was he a genius? Certainly, no, but was he kind and gentle, yes. I came to the realization that I had been found out for who or what I was. A very troubled scab eating picker.
Needless to say, I never went back to him, for I was so ashamed of myself for how vile I thought I was.
Now this brings me to why I am reaching out to others who have this problem.
My sick body caught up to one of the worst side effects from doing this picking and eating. Last October I just happened to be at one of the medical center hospitals to get a kidney scan. I had been told I had kidney failure between level 2-3, whereas 5 is the worst. So I saw a kidney doctor and he ordered the scan. I got up on the day of the appt, and felt fine. Drove 1hr to the hosp and sat down in the waiting room for my appt. It was 2:50 and my appt was for 3pm. By 3:30 I had to use the ladies room. I went up to the receptionist and told her I had passed the 24oz of fluid I needed to consume before the test, so she brought me more. As I sat there I started to feel like I needed to go back to the ladies room to move my bowels. Well, I started to defacate and didn't stop for 30 minutes. I swayed to my feet when I felt I was done, washed my hands and opened the door. I felt as thought I was going to pass out. Luckily, as I opened the door a radiologist was standing across from me reading some xrays. I asked him if he would check my pulse because it felt like it was very slow. He checked it and said it was ok, but then turned to his assistant and asked her to take me to the emergency room. I must have looked like death warmed over, because all of a sudden people were swarmimg all over me. I heard them say her blood pressure is 8o over 40. Next thing I know a doctor is shouting orders like bullets for the nurses to do to me. Well, when they got me stablized they put me in their critical care unit. Guess what I had from doing all that picking and eating? I almost died from SEPTIC SHOCK. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks and in a rehab for 1 more to complete 4 weeks of IV antibiotic therapy. They even gave me a special line into my body called a pick line so the medicine is delivered directly through the pumping of you heart.
Please share even a part of your story as I have. Needless to say, my life is a huge novel. This is but only one small chapter in it.
If you can't talk about your problem, I totally understand, but I am hoping by reaching out this way, I can stop doing this awful harm that I am doing to myself.
Believe it or not, I have been in a psych hosp over 7 times for suicide, but now I realize that this is yet another form of suicide, where I almost died.
Dear Barb, thank you for your brave post. I only set up this account to let you know that I appreciate your reaching out.
ReplyDeleteI just read your post and am literally shaking because the same exact events you described happened to me in September or October in 2013 when I was 19. First of all I have been picking scabs since I can remember .. It got really bad in 2009 when I got acne on my forehead and started to pick them and then pick their scabs. I actually forgot about this violent urge period until I read this. Trichotillomania started in 2009 as well. This happened gradually originally I kept a sketchbook and drew the areas that slowly started balding until pulling the last long strands of hair out of the area just above the nape of my neck. Then started the picking. Then that stopped when I got my first wig however the hair pulling started again when ii discovered tweezers were quite a useful tool. I have never been depressed just very very anxious and worrysome about leading an average life where I will accomplish nothing and die and be forgotten probably my biggest fear that gave me panic attacks and nightmares as a child but that I have learned to repress by thinking about a variety of other things that make me obsess over them. This is how having ADD has greatly benefited me
ReplyDeleteIn my 21 years of existence I have done a great deal of traveling I have lived in many houses gone to many different schools and even lived in and travelled to a variety of different countries all around the world. Moving back to north america was good for avoiding the teasing and name calling from kids when I lived in Asia, however it is probably what caused me to defer the most from my original path of academic success as I was able to meet people my age who were actually choosing to persue things that they wanted to do, not just what their parents predetermined for them or what society said they were good at and should do. They did what they wanted to do. And I had never witnessed that before. I then found myself not trying so hard in what had originally been the point of my life all throughout my closely monitored and sheltered life, my education and being successful.
ReplyDeleteI started to try to find myself and just live in the moment and this unfortunatly caused a lot of backfire from my mom who I idolized. I would ask her something theoretically that I actually did want to do just to see what she thought and would always know that she would oppose or have negative thoughts about my new ideas about the world. It is weird now that I think about it because I was a totally different kid around my friends and in social situations than I felt I could be at home. Amyways. In 2013 after my first overwhelming year of university that ended up with me having to take one or two classes a semester instead of 5 because I would get too overwhelmed and stressed out. I have had low blood pressure or what I can justify as constant lightheaded feelings and blacking out when I stand up or do something that requires a lot of physical activity.. That's what I remembered would happen when I was a kid. I started to get this ear pain on the left ear which followed by horrible headaches and pressure that made my head feel like it was going to explode.. Note that I am bald from hair pulling at this point onwards actually became bald in 2010 however that being said there are still little hairs to pull. So pressure headaches and ear pain as well as going in and out of emergency clinics seeing a different doctor every time who gave me a prescription for new ear infection anti biotics as soon as I relapsed after ending the previous bout. During the time of my ears gross draining thing I went to get all 4 of my impacted wisdom teeth removed by being put under with a general anesthesia. The procedure should have never took place with my health circumstances being the way they were but in Ontario it is hard to get in to see a specialist and we had this booked a year in advance.
ReplyDeleteA week or so after that the headaches came back with a vengeance and I could barely sleep more than 4hrs a night, if even that and then my diet became oddly revolved only around soup-like and bread based meals. Luckily I randomly was selected to be treated by the original doctor at the emergency clinc I I had originally gone to in the beginning of all this nonsense meaning this was going to be my 4th consecutive batch of antibiotics. At this time I could barely walk and was throwing up water when they took my blood pressure and found it at 80 over 55 they immediately had my mom drive me to the ER at the Catholic hospital in the town nearby. I must have looked like death or something because they immediately had me admitted and put in a wheelchair and asked to stop trying to do things like walk and whatever else I was doing that required energy and effort. I was put on a saline IV for dehydration and was seen by two ENTs ( I wasn't going to be able to see an ENT in Ontario under a doctors referral FYI until the next two years as they are booked up until that long) It was determined that I had invasive strep A and it was in my blood stream and imbedded in the mastoid bone behind my left ear. Surgery was to happen the next day however after eating chicken nuggets while staying over night I became very nauseous and threw up and the rest was kinda a blur all I remember is being very weak, scared, slowly going in and out of consciousness. I remember hearing my blood pressure was 79 over 50 and dropping and then having to have an IV be inserted into my collar bone which was painful and then nothing.
ReplyDeleteApparently though the surgery had to happen immediately for fears the strep A would turn flesh eating and also penetrate my brain. So I was told I had the surgery at 3am 2hours after regurgitating chicken nuggets. Apparently I became too weak to breathe and had to be put on a ventilator .. Also apparently after the surgery I didn't wake up when they had induced me too so they put me back under and performed all these tests. Also when they removed the ventilator apparently I tried to talk and my vocal cords got scratched leaving me to sound like a man for the next two months. However 3 days after all the monitoring and tests I woke up on my own and immediately went septic requiring the painful insertion of a chest tube
ReplyDeleteIt was a horrible two weeks of being rehabilitated by learning how to walk, eat, and breathe effectively again but eventually I was discharged and left with an IV having to go back for daily rounds of medicine for the next few weeks. One of the ENTs who basically saved my life told me that the IV treatment was also going to cure my hair pulling and picking manias from some thing with the acronym PANDAS and that it was very rare but wanted to study me more and send it to a national conference... That theory was quickly debunked as when II started to feel better all my anxiety habits returned to theiroriginally high levels. After this whole incident I basically dropped out of university and later moved to the USA last fall.. Where now my sense of self is at an all time low and the picking has basically become the only thing that makes me feel alive as I have no friends here and have found this to be the hardest move as I am over the normal age to be living at home .. Am not in a regular day school university and feel like a useless pointless person who by my appwaeance and personality should lead a perfect healthy lifestyle being the outgoing and talkative person i am but desperately craves the attention to be someone successful and create as many connections as I can with others around me. Lately due to procrastinating impending university class failure I have been in bed almost everyday for more than 16 hours and rarely find enough motivation to leave the house.. And my picking is now happening all the time .. Not just in private anymore. OK wow that was actually very helpful to write but now I shall sleep as it is 1:34 am.
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